Embers (Žhnoucí popel, 2006)

Přidal: Přemek |

Květen 21, 2010

Samuel Beckett. Hudba Maebh Martin, arr. Neil Martin. Produkce Stephen Wright. Režie Stephen Rea.

Osoby a obsazení: Henry (Michael Gambon), Ada (Sinead Cusack), Addie (Carly Baker), The Music Master (Alvaro Lucchesi), The Riding Master (Rupert Graves).

Natočeno v roce 2006 v Belfastu (37 min.). Premiéra 6. 4. 2006 (BBC Radio 3) jako část „Beckett Night – Radio 3′s celebration of the centenary of playwright Samuel Beckett’s birth“. Česká inscenace

Pozn.: In 1976 Stephen Rea worked with Samuel Beckett on a production of the play, Endgame. During rehearsals Beckett said, ‚don’t think about meaning think about rhythm‘ and he regularly emphasised the humour in his work. Stephen Rea has translated his experience of working with one of the great modern dramatists into a funny and moving new production of this wonderful radio play, Embers.

Henry (Michael Gambon) sits on the strand haunted by the sound of the sea. He conjures up voices, evocations, stories and sounds from his past as he tries to drown out the inescapable presence of the sea.

Embers is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957 and first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959. Donald McWhinnie directed Jack MacGowran – for whom the play was especially written – as „Henry“, Kathleen Michael as „Ada“ and Patrick Magee as „Riding Master“ and „Music Master“. Robert Pinget translated the work as Cendres and „The first stage production was by the French Graduate Circle of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival, 1977.“

The most recent version of Embers was broadcast in 2006 on BBC Radio 3 and directed by Stephen Rea. The cast included Michael Gambon as Henry, Sinead Cusack as Ada, Rupert Graves, Alvaro Lucchesi and Carly Baker. This production was rebroadcast on BBC Radio 3 on May 16, 2010 as part of a double bill with a 2006 production of Krapp’s Last Tape.

Opinions vary as to whether the work succeeds. Hugh Kenner calls it „Beckett’s most difficult work“ and yet maintains that the piece „coheres to perfection,“ John Pilling disagrees, remarking that Embers „is the first of Beckett’s dramatic works that seems to lack a real centre,“ whereas Richard N. Coe considers the play „not only minor, but one of [Beckett's] very few failures.“ Anthony Cronin records in his biography of Beckett that „Embers met with a mixed reception [but tempers this comment by noting that] the general tone of English criticism was somewhat hostile to Beckett“ at the time.

The author’s own view was that it was a „rather ragged“ text. He said that it was „not very satisfactory, but I think just worth doing I think it just gets by for radio.“

For all his personal reservations the play won the RAI prize in the 1959 Prix Italia contest, not, as has been often reported, „the actual Prix Italia which went to John Reeve’s play, Beach of Strangers.“